Top 3 Cloud Complexities and How to Solve them with IAM

It’s no secret that cloud adoption is transforming the underlying infrastructure of digital business. Companies of all sizes are embracing public clouds and SaaS, and reaping the benefits of having thousands of specialized web-based apps at their disposal. But for all of its evolution in the past few years, the cloud is still not inherently equipped to work seamlessly with businesses.

Based on what we’ve learned from our extensive customer base, here are the top 3 challenges that IT must address to help employees utilize cloud applications at their maximum efficiency.

1. Multiple Identity Sources

Organizations typically use a series of different databases to store all user information. These databases manage access to computers, networks, applications and other information resources. But with so many apps and so many users, keeping all of that information up to date is an impossible task.

Organizations need a single source of truth to manage users universally across their entire app set. Cloud IAM solutions like OneLogin have the power to unify multiple conflicting user directories and bridge the gap to cloud applications, leveraging our expansive range of connectors.

2. Manual User Provisioning/Deprovisioning

Before Cloud IAM solutions, the only way to effectively manage user accounts in cloud applications was through the admin console of each respective app. Manually managing the provisioning and deprovisioning of users this way can be tedious and time consuming. Even worse, this method can put sensitive access and information at risk if IT fails to deprovision users from applications as necessary.

In response to this issue, IAM vendors offer automated provisioning and deprovisioning. This allows IT to instantly grant employees access to the apps they need, and remove those permissions just as quickly. OneLogin can serve as a hub for all employee applications, allowing for easy alterations to user attributes.

3. Complex Entitlements

For businesses to succeed, IT must not only manage what applications employees have access to, but the individual permissions within those apps. That said, the rules and restrictions upon individual users’ apps can get complex at large enterprises. When you consider that organizations employ hundreds or thousands of users and the average employee utilizes 28 distinct work apps, managing these entitlements can become a paramount challenge.

We need to automate these kinds of controls and make them simple enough for anyone to manage. To make the process of entitlements management less complicated, mature Cloud IAM services enable organizations to preserve the directory’s organizational hierarchy when synchronizing users between systems.

Think of the tremendous opportunity that becomes available to enterprises when they aren’t concerned with these types of complexities. When businesses aren’t burdened with these distractions, they are free to focus on their critical business operations, and reach new levels of productivity.

If you want to learn more about these challenges and industry best practices on how to solve them, you may be interested in the second in our Q4 webinar series, focused on the complexities involved in cloud adoption. There is also a third webinar in the series scheduled for Wednesday, November 4, with a focus on User Experience in the Cloud. We will cover best practice examples centered around “Evolving the User Experience.” We will also share a recent success story about a joint Cloud Sherpas-OneLogin customer that adopted a service-centric approach to service management, as outlined in this recent Cloud Sherpas Blog post.

Sign up for the webinars to ask questions during the Q&A section, and receive the corresponding Whitepaper. You can also gain access to the on-demand recordings and slides after the sessions.

About the Author

Jack Shepherd joined the OneLogin team in Summer of 2015, and is now the Content Marketing Lead at OneLogin. Jack specializes in producing thought leadership pieces around the latest cloud technologies, cybersecurity, and the evolving role of unified access management.

About the Author

Jack Shepherd joined the OneLogin team in Summer of 2015, and is now the Content Marketing Lead at OneLogin. Jack specializes in producing thought leadership pieces around the latest cloud technologies, cybersecurity, and the evolving role of unified access management.